So I got into my car today and noticed that the plastic bezel around the tachometer in my countryman had melted. I always make it a point to tilt both the front and back panes of the moon roof when I am not in the car so heat does not build up. So I am a little surprised that this has happened.

Has anyone else experienced this yet?

I have yet to contact my MA, but plan to on Tuesday. I talked to him two weeks ago or so about the peeling chrome tape issue ( I'm not happy about it ).

I have attached a picture, so let me know what you think.

Take care,

Eric

 

Yeow Eric! So sorry man that you have encountered these problems. I hope that MINI resolves it all quickly and to your full satisfaction. Please keep us posted here!

Paul

 

OMGWTFBBQ?? That's not good!! Keep us posted on what your MA and SA have to say about it since this might happen to us all.

Thanks for sharing. I hope they fix it for you.

 

Wow!!!

 

Wow, that's a new one. Interesting that there's a linear pattern to it, like someone put a hot grate on it ... it looks grilled. Could it be that the tilted sunroof actually somehow focused the sun's rays onto your tach, sort of like a magnifying glass effect, such that as the sun moved across the sky it burned lines into it?

 

Wow, that is really weird! In my R50 there is a spot on the drivers side window that is warped somehow. Everything looks distorted and stretched out through it. Maybe you've got something like that going on somewhere and it is in fact having a magnifying glass effect.

 

something had to have been laying on that, no?

 

I would agree with dannyhavoc. If there was nothing on top of the tach, it had to be concentrated sunlight. I took my wife's clubbie tach aprt to fix the rattle, and that is all solid plastic parts. Unfortunately, my bet would be that MINI will say"that sucks, but it's not a manufacturing issue and it's not a warranty repair."

 

While I initially agreed that there must have been something laying on top. then Then the more I look at the picture I realized that the pattern goes through the other side of the tach over the non-melted red plastic. You would think the much thinner clear red plastic would have melted with the pattern. I know it was mentioned that the plastic surround on the tach is solid, but is it really? Is it sandwiched in an I beam type formation for weight and cost savings? Not to mention that the tach is small and rounded on the sides, so for it to be something that got hot and melted into the tach, it would need to match a fairly severe curve that most of us probably have nothing in the house to match.

With that said, I could just be smoking crack.

Michael

 

One of my previous motorcycles - a BMW F800ST suffered from a similar issue where if you parked just right (or, more accurately - wrong), the sunlight refracted through the windshield would in fact melt the top of the instrument cluster.